The subject matter disclosed herein relates to aircraft control systems and, more particularly, to aircraft station deselect and cueing systems.
In fly by wire aircraft, it is often possible to deselect either the pilot or the copilot flight control station. This feature is available to isolate erroneous inputs from failed sensors in one or more flight axes, to allow ingress/egress into the pilot and copilot flight control stations without making an inadvertent input to the controls, to safely allow a passenger to sit in a pilot or copilot control station and to permit aircraft to account for an incapacitated pilot.
Although there are small display cues that a pilot or copilot control station is turned off, these cues can be missed or ignored as part of the cacophony of other factors crewmen are addressing. Thus, there is potential confusion or delay with respect to determining which of the pilot and the copilot is actually flying the aircraft.
For example, a pilot might attempt to fly the aircraft even though his control station is turned off and the copilot's station is turned on. In such cases, if the copilot is not inputting proper control commands into his control station, neither the pilot nor the copilot would actually be flying the aircraft. If this situation were to occur in an emergency situation, loss of the aircraft and the crew could result.